Obradovich: Is state aid for schools and reform about to 'hit the wall'?

Feb. 23, 2013

The governor’s gambit that tied an increase in state aid for schools to his agenda for education reform is doing the trick in speeding the legislation along, Department of Education Director Jason Glass said Friday.

“The reality is, that’s been effective at moving the bill forward at what legislatively is a lightning pace through this,” Glass said during an interview on Iowa Public Television.

Indeed, the Republican majority in the Iowa House approved a bill last week that combined a 2 percent increase in state aid for schools with a version of the governor’s education reform plan. Now it goes to the Senate, where Democrats are in the majority.

“It’s about to hit a wall, I’m afraid,” Tom Downs, executive director of the Iowa School Board Association, said Friday, referring to the House proposal. “The rocket energy that we heard today is going to need some fuel in the next few weeks.”

The Senate already approved a 4 percent budget increase for schools in a separate bill, while a committee continues to work on education reform. Democrats have insisted the money move ahead of reforms. They also point to the law requiring school aid to stand alone in the bill — a rule they don’t want to break after complaining that legislators failed to comply last year with the deadline for setting school funding.

That may sound like a lot of procedural nonsense, but the clock is ticking. Iowa schools have to certify their budgets by April 15, which means they need a decision within a couple of weeks. Layoffs and program cuts are far more likely if school officials have to assume no increase in state aid is coming again next year. That doesn’t leave much time for the House and Senate to send bills to a conference committee to haggle their way to a deal.

Downs is concerned for the short term with dollars and deadlines, but there are also fears for the future. Gov. Terry Branstad uses 100 percent state aid to pay for the budget increase, instead of combining it with property taxes. The idea is to eliminate some of the inequities among districts due to differences in property values.

That’s great when the state treasury is flush. But if this becomes the standard, it’s inevitable that there will be years when state revenues dip and schools will not have property taxes as a backstop.

Glass acknowledged the concern. “I think there’s some accuracy in that it will require that the governor and the state Legislature make good on its funding promises going forward,” he said. The state could set aside money in fat years to avoid cuts when things get lean, he noted.

Unless, of course, lawmakers decide to give back the entire $800 million state budget surplus in a tax rebate this year. Glass’ response to that: “Yeah. No comment.”

There are policy issues to be worked out, and some of those may prove contentious. But the way the money issues are resolved could have greater consequences for the future than just the source of the money.

State law requires separate legislation to be approved a year in advance for school funding, in part to avoid making it a hostage to the political skirmishes of the day. If Branstad succeeds in using the state’s school-aid formula as a bargaining chip to pass education reforms, why would he ever go back to following current law? Why would any governor?

That’s not to say Democrats should stall the reform bill and hurt schools just to avoid a bad precedent. But maybe instead of dueling to the death over the difference between 2 percent and 4 percent, lawmakers should consider ways to give districts more stability and predictability long term.